Open letter to Ed Miliband, secretary of state for energy and climate change

The changing of the world's climate, primarily caused by the rich world's consumption of fossil fuels, is already impacting negatively on many impoverished communities and indigenous peoples across the global south. Yet it is countries in the global north, with 18% of the world's population, who are historically responsible for 70% of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Through increased floods, droughts, sea levels and disease, hundreds of millions of people face having their livelihoods destroyed the more global temperatures increase.

• Promote financial transfers from north to south, based on the repayment of climate debts and subject to democratic control, in order to fund adaptation and mitigation in the global south.

We are therefore alarmed that the UK is considering allowing building new coal-powered stations to be built, such as at Kingsnorth in Kent. Coal power is the most climate-polluting way to generate electricity. We are further concerned about any attempt to "offset" the emissions of coal power stations through the clean development mechanism, which has continuously had negative impacts on communities in the global south while failing to cut emissions.

New coal power stations in the UK will exacerbate the impacts of climate change on impoverished communities in the global south and prevent the UK from developing sustainable ways of creating a low-carbon economy which could be used elsewhere in the world. A decision to support new coal power stations will confirm the UK as a climate criminal in the international climate change negotiations.

Communities in the global south face the worst impacts of climate change unless radical action is taken now to cut emissions. We call on you to stop the building of new coal power stations in the UK.

The Agency for Co-operation & Research in Development (Acord), Africa, Arab Climate Alliance Cesta, El Salvador and 28 others

James Hansen's "Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them" (Comment, last week), is breathtaking in its naivety. Singling out coal as "the greatest threat to... life on the planet" is melodramatic.

It is far easier to recover carbon from coal combustion than from gas or oil. Carbon capture storage (CCS) removes 90% of CO 2 from coal.

If Mr Hansen's prescription were adopted tomorrow, the lights in the developed world would go out. Public order would break down and there would be a substantial risk of deaths.

The industry fully supports the development of CCS technology, even if, as some suggest, the government's CCS plans are not visionary enough and not adequately funded.

You are wrong to argue that the government faces a choice between "carbon austerity and fossil-fuel energy" ("We must make coal-fired energy less toxic", leader, last week). Research by energy consultants Econ Pöyry shows that coal is not needed to fill the energy gap if energy efficiency and renewable energy targets are met.

Your suggestion that investment in CCS will allow Kingsnorth to be built without wrecking the government's climate credibility is also flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that CCS is unlikely to be deployed effectively before 2050. Even increased investment would not guarantee earlier success.